How Domain Tracking Works in Siteimprove Analytics

Summary

Siteimprove Analytics automatically tracks domains and subdomains, and uses configurable domain settings to determine how traffic is attributed and reported.

Overview

The purpose of this article is to explain how to configure your analytics sites, and what are options available when unwanted domains are reported on within your Analytics statistics.

Tracking on Domains and Subdomain

When a site is added to your Siteimprove Analytics subscription, we will automatically track all subdomains on that domain containing the Siteimprove Analytics Script.

For example, if you have a website called www.domain.com, then the standard configuration in Siteimprove Analytics is that anything that has domain.com in the URL will be logged to this site unless a site with the specific subdomain has been added to your subscription.

So for example, if Site 1 and Site 2 below are configured for analytics on your Siteimprove account, then any logs we get for Site 3 will be associated with Site 1 by default.

• Site 1: www.domain.com
• Site 2: subdomain.domain.com
• Site 3: staging.domain.com

Site Configuration Concepts

We include Site configuration options in Siteimprove Analytics to allow you to organize your incoming Analytics data in the way that suits you best.

For example, if you have landing pages hosted on external domains, you can add those domains as "matches" to your existing sites.

Remember to add the Siteimprove script to your landing page template too.

Be careful when adding similar URL matches to different sites. If a page appears to match multiple sites, it will automatically be allocated to the one with the most specific URL match.

Domain Settings Explained

Domain settings are a way to control the domains associated with the Analytics tracking for your site.

Domains are configured as either internal or external.

• External domains: Siteimprove records visits to pages/domains as being external to your website. This means they will not be included as page views, but rather as clicks on outbound links.
• Internal domains: If the domain is assigned as internal it will be treated as part of your main site. Statistics regarding page views and visits will be collected.